New Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII Screenshots Show The Mysterious Lumina

Lumina is one of the new characters in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. She appears to be a playful girl and at times Lumina guides Lightning. Other times, Lumina distracts her. What is Lumina thinking and why does she have that sly smile when giving Lightning advice?

Lightning’s role in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is to save the world and find her sister Serah.

Square Enix gave Lightning different outfits like Shadow Dust (left) and Dark Muse (right). Wearing garb does more than alter Lightning’s appearance. Lightning’s parameters, magic spells, and abilities change depending on what weapon and garb Lightning has equipped.

Players can switch between three sets of garb during battle. Lightning’s default set of garb is called Equilibrium and has a balanced set of parameters.

Here’s Lightning using the Dark Muse garb.

Lightning’s Shadow Dust garb gives her new abilities like a spell that can banish multiple foes at once.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is set in Luxerion. The downtown area near the south station is lined with shops like restaurants and inns. The south station plaza is packed with people visiting the divine city of Luxerion if you visit during the day. After sunset, the graveyard becomes vacant. Square Enix added a clock to Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII which changes events depending on the time of day you visit a location.

Players can take on quests like monster hunting missions by talking to NPCs or reading message boards.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is slated for release this fall on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

I know alot of people hated the first two games, but I loved them and can’t wait for the 3rd!

Henrique Melo

Ahhh, Lightining’s armpits… <3

Mrgrgr and Unacceptable World

So lightning now can change her skill parameters depending on the costume she is wearing?
………. i wonder if swimsuits costume will allow her to charm her foes lol.

Masa

thank God this will be the last in this horredous FFXIII saga which damaged the fanbase so much, along with FFXIV…….SE have alot of work to do on FFXV to win back the millions of fans they lost.

Josh Strange

FF13 is a filler series just to give FF players something to hold them off until SE is finished with Versus13

Chiupon

if you think that this isn’t going to set a precedent for their future releases, you should probably just give up. Unrealistic expectations much?

http://twitter.com/#!/kaishou Kaishou

j-j-j-j-j-just w-w-w-what? ah screw it I’m not bothered.

OathkeeperSoraXIII

actually the fanbase got more damaged from the fact it was announced to be multiplatform.

QBninja01

More like it brought out the anger in fans wishing for games that aren’t xiii

Herok♞

Honestly, the “fanbase” isn’t ever going to be something to worry about since everyone is different and will like different games. I liked 13 can I say the same about certain other entries no not all, you can replace 13 with any other one you like and it will be the whole fanbase in a nutshell, since I have never met someone who loved or hated all Final Fantasy games.

Shirogane Takeru

changing garbs in the middle of battle?

sounds like X-2

FFmax

Oh god it does. This is basically the dressphere system again.

Kaihedgie

Yey :3

Göran Isacson

Can’t say that Dark Muse does much for me (camo-shirt + chaps =buwhaaat?), but Shadow Dust… I kinda like it. It’s shabby and dirty, almost like a post-apocalyptic outfit. It’s not as busy and crazily detailed as usual, but something… something about it kinda works. Also- she seems to change weapons depending on outfit, wonder if that means you can’t swap weapons without swapping outfit? ALSO also- barcode tattoo on her thigh? Whut?

Nicolas Vasquez

thats clearly the girl fron the second, at least give her a ball mask or something.

Nickie

As long as their is a happily ever after where LightningxHope and SnowxSerah then all is good in the world.

http://twitter.com/Inscyc Insanecyclone

Lumina is probably some yuel soul or something taking the face of Serah or young lightning.

Priscilla Tang

If that’s the case (Yuel+Serah), prepare for the massive shipping with Noel.

gustinex

FFXIII-IV : The life of lumina

vespe

FFXIII-V: saving lumina and serah again

FitzpatrickPhillips

Where are people getting she looks like Serah from. Her face is completely different. They’re similar in hair though.

Tien Ron

also if you look at her clothes they share similarities to serah’s clothes in 13

http://twitter.com/NyanButtercup Yves

Sly Smile huh? I think the more important thing is YTF does she look like Serah?

http://twitter.com/#!/Leafy_Cam Leafhopper

I think the pink hair ratio in the Final Fantasy 13 games is a little too high.

Steven Lamphere

What? Three? Perhaps I am not looking closely enough but I was under the impression that the only pink haired characters were Lightning, Lumina and Serah…and I highly doubt that Lumina having pink hair and in a [vaguely] familiar style is coincidental

Ehren Rivers

Actually, in XIII there were a number of people you could see during the Purge or when you’re running through Palumpolom as Snow that have pink hair. In XIII-2 people with pink hair are especially common in New Bodhum 3AF, both male and female, and they appear in several other places throughout the game. Furthermore, the story behind Lumina and the murders in Luxerion (some of the details were revealed earlier today) is that young women with pink hair are being killed. The women are supposed to resemble Lightning, and it is thought that the people who oppose Bhunivelze only have a vague description of what the Liberator looks like.

The problem is, I think, that people are only thinking about the number of main characters with pink hair which is pretty high to be fair. Three now, and if you count Vanille (whose hair is a deeply saturated orange-pink kinda like grapefruit) it’s four. The rest of the characters have slightly more even spreads of color; Silver is fairly common, but people have grown used to this in Final Fantasy games already. Most of the other ‘unnatural’ hair colors in the XIII games belong to important characters and are only used the once, even though it is implied that all the colors you see are pretty much ‘natural’ for that world/setting.

Leo121

What’s up with Nomura. His character designs and outfits keep getting ridiculous.

Chiupon

There’s probably a reason they’re letting an actual fashion designer do the costumes for Versus…

OatMatadoQuatro

Lightning: I just want to save Serah… again.

http://epiclyamazing.wordpress.com/ AzureNova

Lightning’s Shadow Dust outfit looks, dare I say, dirty lol, I like her Dark Muse outfit though. Now on to the real point.

Lumina looks great, and it’s like you can tell how she’s going to be like from her expressions, poses, and what she says in the screens.

Also, what Lightning says about “Saving Sera” kind of makes me feel like she’s somewhat going down the Noel route like how he wanted to save Yuel and came from the future. I mean they did already tell us that it’s been 500 years since the events of the last game.

Kevin Lor

Reminds me of Serah. That’s a good thing for me hehe

Chiupon

Lumina seems mysterious enough, and a lot of the quality of the writing is gonna be derived from her role in the story/identity— I never had much gruff with 13 in the first place considering everything generally displeases me, but I feel as if a lot of the future of the series is riding on this. They’re trying very hard to redeem themselves overall and improve the quality of their games, and I think whether versus blows or is actually good is gonna be dependent on if this game is… quality. :V

like really if it sucks don’t expect much from Versus. just sayin’

Dyne1319

no more ff13, new franchise please

eilegz

lets hope this time they bring back vanille and fang ;o;

Tianyu Wei

she even has Sera’s ponytail….

http://gamgambit.tumblr.com/ Thespian Treasure Hunter ♢

I like Shadow Dust and Dark Muse better than the default muuuch better.

LETS PRAY FOR LOCALIZATION

Lumina gonna be voice by laura bailey, i am already calling it Kappa.

Steven Higgins

Hmm. I wonder if there’ll be that magical girl-esque transformation sequence when you switch garbs like the Dresspheres in X-2.

SuperSailorV

Lumina probably doesn’t look exactly like Serah, but if you don’t think that’s deliberate and there won’t be a connection, then…. lol

The Shadow Dust costume reminds me of Summoner attire.

Scrooge_McDuck

Indeed. Lumina doesn’t look like Serah in the same way as Roxas doesn’t look like Sora.

http://strictlyapathy.comoj.com/ SoulArbiter

God I hope Lumina doesn’t turn out to be Serah… Or an alternate Lightning.

revenent hell

I quite like the alt costumes and the idea of the dressphere consept I liked FF10&10-2 though I know a great many did not.They where fun games and the ideas behind them where solid to me.
Lumina reminds me more of Noel than Serah…The nose and whatnot reminds me of how his face looked in a few of the cut scenes in XIII-2(I realy need to finish this game at some point) So to me shes not a good match for Serah facial feature wise but who knows she could be made from an aspect of Serah’s spirit/body/whatever or some such nonsence.
I realy do think she has a great deal to do with Serah though

Maumac77

So her multiple garbs as well as her weapons have an influence on her parameters……this sounds a tad bit like Erza from Fairy Tail. Cool

Kai M

Please Sqaure Enix, give us a wonderful Collector edition like you did with 13-2.

Detrimont

am i the only one who thinks she actually looks different, except for the hair

WyattEpp

“…why does she have that sly smile when giving Lightning advice?”
Brace for shipping!

…oh come on, you know it’s going to happen.

PersonaBull

Is it really just me that sees Lumina as a blend of Serah/Lightning and Hope? Her face looks exactly like Hope’s to me, especially in that second picture.

NightzeroAX

Lightning y u have no ass,

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